"4:08 AM, 29 November, 1994. Exterior temperature at sea level is currently 24 degrees Celsius. Ambient temperature inside the Orchid station: 13.4, and temperature within the inner chamber is negative 8.2."
"Dr. Chang!"
Pierre presses Stop on the recorder, hard enough to rattle the microcassette inside, and glares at the approaching assistant.
"She's ready to go, sir."
"Then bring her in," he replies flatly. He watches the man nod and turn on his heel and walk right back in the direction he came from, then shakes his head and starts recording again. "Subject is a 12-year-old female, imported in July. After four months of training at the Hydra station, this is the first Orchid experiment that will be performed with this individual. Subject has been outfitted with the standard DHARMA tag for GPS tracking, ID number 481-5."
The same assistant re-enters the room, followed a few moments later by the subject – one lumbering polar bear, its movements still sluggish from sedation. The handlers on either side of the bear move in cautious sidesteps through the large doorway, each of them holding a long metal rod connected to its collar.
Pierre sets the recorder down on the desk that separates him from the rest of the room, then picks up a pen to jot down a few extra notes. He looks up just as the handlers carefully move the bear into position, nudging it along toward the pink fish biscuit placed further within the interior of the underground chamber.
The bear pauses, halfway through the doors leading into the experiment room, and Pierre frowns, shooting an impatient glance at his watch. His workday should have ended well over an hour ago. He's far beyond being surprised by these delays, given the average level of competence among the crew that's been assigned to the station, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.
"Whoa, whoa!"
His head snaps up at the shout, just in time to see the polar bear pitch to the side, throwing one of the handlers to the floor. The other digs his heels in and holds on to the bar for dear life, but he's no match for the lumbering beast; it turns its head and roars, and then, with almost laser-like focus, it lunges toward Pierre.
"Tranquilizer!" a voice shouts from somewhere nearby, as Pierre takes a quick step back. There's a flurry of movement on the edge of his vision, but it's not fast enough; the bear crashes through the desk and manages to take one unobstructed swipe at him before letting out another roar, this one sounding more pained than the last. It turns to the side to search for its attacker and stands up to its full, intimidating height on its hind legs, and then it sways in place and crashes to the ground with a low grunt, its eyes gradually drifting closed.
Pierre stays where he is, his back pressed to the wall and the wind thoroughly knocked out of him from the impact. He's no stranger to risk; otherwise, he wouldn't be here in the first place, whether here means the Orchid station specifically or the entirety of the island itself. Still, his heart is pounding, his adrenaline heightened, and he can't help but let out a curse when he looks down at his left arm. Below the elbow, the sleeve of his lab coat is in ribbons, claw marks torn through the fabric like it's nothing more than tissue paper, and he frowns at the deep gash in his forearm and the unnatural bend of his elbow.
The pain would undoubtedly be agonizing, if there was anything to feel; instead, he simply lets out an exasperated sigh, grips the arm firmly in his right hand, and twists the damaged prosthetic back into place.
That's easy enough to fix; the experiment, on the other hand...
"You!" He storms over to one of the handlers. "What the hell happened?"
"I'm sorry, sir," he says, barely looking up from the bar that he's still trying to reconnect to the unconscious bear's collar. "I guess she wasn't hungry?"
"She wasn't hungry." Pierre's eyes narrow. "The protocol for performing this experiment is exceptionally clear about altering the subject's feeding schedule beforehand. You followed those instructions." He glances at the man's nametag. "Didn't you, Jean?"
Jean scratches his head. "Well, yeah, I mean, mostly."
"When was the last time you fed this animal?"
"Uh..." He looks down at his watch. "An hour ago."
Pierre stares at him. "Please explain to me why the bears are not fed before being brought here."
"Sir?"
He rolls his eyes. "How do you motivate the bears to follow instructions during an experiment?"
"Oh. Um. Food."
"Good, so at least you understand something about the animals that you work with on a daily basis." Pierre stops to take a deep breath, to keep his voice at a moderate volume – he's not going to shout at this man, not yet. "So, would you care to explain why you chose to ignore protocol and feed the bear outside of the designated schedule? Was the bear famished? Was it moments away from dying of starvation?"
Jean shakes his head. "No. But–"
"But what?"
"Well, it's almost wintertime, and bears are usually hibernating, so I thought that, uh..."
Pierre's eye twitches. "What hemisphere are you standing in?" he asks, with remarkable calm.
He glances down, like a hemisphere is some sort of substance to be scraped off his shoes. "Um..."
"Where. Are. We."
"The...Pacific?"
Pierre nods. "That's right. The South Pacific. Which means we're south of the equator, which means we're in the southern hemisphere, which means it's not almost winter, it's summer," he states, his voice gradually rising along with his blood pressure. "Of course, all of that is completely irrelevant, because polar bears don't hibernate!"
Both handlers take a small step back, and it only makes Pierre angrier; these are men who work with 500-pound animals daily, and they're frightened by him? "Sorry, sir," the other one speaks up. "It won't–"
"Don't be sorry," he snaps. "Be competent. Otherwise, you can spend the rest of your time here cleaning up after the polar bears while someone else trains them. Do I make myself clear?"
The two of them nod and turn away in unison, and Pierre pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs, and checks his watch again. If it wasn't time for him to go home before, it certainly is now.
"Owens!" he calls out toward an observation platform above on his way past. He waits for the man in a lab coat matching his to turn toward him and waves. "It's all yours." Then he enters the elevator with a sigh and mutters under his breath, "Good luck."
It's nearly dawn by the time Pierre makes it back to the barracks. Besides the distant chatter of the security personnel from the direction of the motor pool, the small neighborhood is still and quiet, so much so that Pierre flinches a bit at the loud creak of the front porch beneath his feet.
He steps through the door, then stops. The air inside the house is warm, nearly matching the temperature outside, a far cry from the 68 degrees he'd set the thermostat to before he left.
As he shrugs off his coat, there's a shuffle of movement from the direction of the hallway and the barely audible creak of a door swinging shut.
"Hi, Dad!" Miles' voice comes from the sofa, suspiciously cheery, like the smile plastered onto his face as Pierre steps forward to survey the otherwise-empty living room. "How was work?"
The flickering static of the TV screen casts the room in a pale light, bright enough to make out the large blanket draped haphazardly over one side of the sofa, the two open cans of DHARMA brand soda sitting on the coffee table and the half-empty bowl of popcorn between them. Pierre frowns. "Everything alright?"
"Everything's perfect," Miles replies with an overly enthusiastic nod. "I...wasn't expecting you to be home so early."
"I'm late."
"Oh." He glances at the clock on the VCR. "I...didn't notice. I uh, fell asleep, watching a movie, so..." He trails off as Pierre continues to stare at him, his expression unchanging. "What?"
"He's here, isn't he?"
"Who's here?" he asks, much too quickly, and then he leaps to his feet a moment too late to intercept Pierre as he crosses the room to open the bedroom door. "Dad, wait–"
He flicks on the light and locks eyes with the dark-haired teenager in one corner, frozen halfway through the process of climbing out Miles' open window.
Pierre heaves a sigh. "Hello, Daniel."
Daniel winces, and slowly puts up one hand in an awkward wave. "Hi, Dr. Chang."
With a quick glance back at Miles, who can't seem to look him in the eyes, Pierre gestures toward the living room. "Why don't you come and join us, I think it's time we all have a talk."
Daniel shoots Miles a panicked look, but nods and swings his leg back over the windowsill. He keeps his head down as he walks past Pierre and comes to a stop beside Miles, hovering nervously in place.
"Have a seat." Pierre crosses the room to sink into his armchair, while the two boys shuffle to the sofa and sit on separate cushions, leaving a foot of conspicuous empty space between them.
"What happened to your arm?" Miles asks.
There's genuine concern in his voice, but Pierre frowns anyway. "Don't try to change the subject."
He deflates a bit. "Sorry." Daniel glances over at him before dropping his gaze back down to his own hands, clasped tightly together in his lap.
Pierre sighs. "I don't want you to be sorry, Miles. I want you to be smart. I want you to be safe, both of you."
Miles shifts uncomfortably, like he's worried about where this is going, and Pierre spends a moment regretting his word choice. They've had an awkward talk about being safe, once before; at the time, Pierre's only real concern was the possibility of his son getting someone – namely, his friend Charlotte – pregnant, a scenario made infinitely more complicated by their location here on the island.
Of course, he needn't have worried about that after all.
He glances back and forth between the two boys. "I don't think I need to reiterate the risk you two are taking just by associating with each other in the first place, but this? Bringing a hostile into the barracks?" Daniel's shoulders tense, and Pierre rethinks his word choice for a second time. He continues anyway, shaking his head, "The two of you can't keep playing with fire like this. This is the third time I've found you in my house, and I'm not trying to catch you here. What happens if there's a security patrol at the wrong moment? What if you trip a motion sensor on your way in? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble we'd all be in if it was discovered that one of your people had been sneaking in and out of DHARMA territory on a regular basis? And that I knew about it?"
He watches Daniel wring his hands, watches Miles' arm twitch like he wants to reach for him.
"Do your parents know about any of this, Daniel?" Pierre asks after a few seconds of tense silence.
Daniel stiffens. "No, sir."
"I imagine that they wouldn't be very pleased with this situation, either."
"No, sir," he repeats quietly, his eyes fixed on the floor.
The waver in his voice makes Pierre wonder what would matter more to the other boy's parents – the fact that he's seeing someone from the DHARMA Initiative, or the fact that that someone also happens to be a boy. He can't imagine what this must be like for the two of them, not really.
He leans forward and makes a deliberate effort to soften his voice as he addresses Miles. "Please understand. I want you to be happy. There are only a few weeks left until the sub leaves," he says, and both of them wince. "So I understand why you want to spend as much of this time as you can together, but you have to be more careful." He shakes his head. "You can't keep bringing him here."
Miles starts to protest, but Daniel interrupts him. "You're right," he says with a nod, his voice still soft but far more confident than before. "You're right, and I'm sorry for any trouble that I've caused." It's an awfully direct statement, almost suspiciously so, but the look in his eyes is nothing but genuine.
Pierre gives a quick nod of approval. "You don't come back here, then," he states. "You stay on your side of the fence, and the two of you only meet inside the buffer zone. Understand?"
"Absolutely." Daniel looks over at Miles, who mumbles out his own reluctant agreement.
"Good." Pierre glances at the VCR clock with a weary sigh. "Now, you need to leave, Daniel."
He gets to his feet, already nodding in response, and Miles follows him down the hall. The two of them say their goodbyes quietly, with all the awkwardness of a teenage couple fully aware that a parent is watching, and then Daniel finally slips through the back door and closes it quietly behind him.
Once they're alone, Pierre waits for the inevitable argument from Miles; instead, his son simply mutters out a "good night" and retreats sullenly to his room.
Pierre sighs and hauls himself to his feet to do the same. He's getting far too old for this.
"Charlotte, wait!" Miles shouts over the sheets of rain pouring down around him. He can barely keep track of her in the storm, now that her bright red hair is a dull soaking wet, a muted brown weaving between the greens and grays of the jungle.
"Over here," she calls out. She's wearing an impatient expression on her face when Miles finally catches up to her, ducking beneath a low branch as if it will provide ample cover from the too-big water droplets coming at them from seemingly every direction at once.
He huddles close to the tree trunk and hugs his arms tightly over his chest. "I wanna go back."
"I know." Charlotte shields her eyes with one hand and peers into the curtain of gray falling down around them.
"What are you doing?"
"We need to find a place to wait this out," she says with all the authority of an eldest sibling, and Miles shakes his head with the firm defiance of an only child.
"I don't wanna wait it out, I wanna go back." A bright flash of lightning makes him flinch, and he waits for the deafening roll of thunder to fade away before continuing, "We need to go home. We've already been gone too long."
"I know," she repeats, "But trying to find the way back in this will only get us more lost."
Miles blinks and groans. "We're lost?"
"No, we aren't," Charlotte snaps without looking at him.
"This was a stupid idea!"
"Shut up, Miles." Another streak of lightning illuminates the gray sky above the canopy, and Charlotte grabs his arm to pull him in a random direction. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" Charlotte doesn't say anything, but Miles gets an answer soon enough when he sees the ominous cave entrance he's being led toward. He slows to a stop and trips a bit, nearly taking Charlotte down with him. "I'm not going in there."
"Don't be a baby." Charlotte grabs his hand again and drags him into the cave before he can argue further.
The overwhelming static of the rain in his ears turns to a dull roar once they're under cover, and he wipes at his face with one hand. "This was a stupid idea," he repeats, with all the disdain his ten-year-old body can muster.
"Why'd you go along with it, then?" Charlotte grumbles. She turns away from him to survey their shelter, peering into the shadows deeper inside the cave.
Miles shrugs and continues to pout. "You're the oldest. You're supposed to be the responsible one."
She turns back to him and stands up a bit straighter to emphasize the two-year gap in their ages. "And that's why we're in here instead of out there," she says matter-of-factly.
He rolls his eyes. "I'd rather be under an actual roof, not stuck here with you."
"Hush," she orders, so dismissively that Miles scoffs out loud in response.
"All I'm saying is, don't try to act like this isn't your fault–"
"Quiet," she hisses, deadly serious, and then, "Did you hear that?"
Miles freezes mid-step, a few feet behind Charlotte as she cautiously moves further into the cave. "Hear what?" he breathes. Charlotte doesn't answer, just keeps moving toward the unknown sound. Miles follows, hating every second. "I have a bad feeling about this," he announces quietly, for the record.
"You have bad feelings about everything, Miles," Charlotte retorts, barely above a whisper. She starts to say something else, then freezes.
This time, Miles hears it too, a soft shuffling sound from alarmingly close by. "What is that?"
"I think there might be…" Charlotte takes a small step forward and stops, turning to look at something around a corner. "Hi."
Miles stumbles forward the last few steps, his fear overpowered by curiosity, and stares down at the source of the noise – a boy, sitting with his back to the wall. "Who are you?" Miles blurts out. The boy can't be any older than he is, but Miles knows all the other kids in the DHARMA Initiative. "What are you doing here?"
The boy's eyes, red and puffy, dart back and forth between them.
"Are you alright?" Charlotte asks. She crouches down to his level slowly, trying not to startle him, but he flinches anyway and curls into a ball, his arms wrapped around his knees. His feet are bare, his clothes filthy.
"Where'd you come from?" Miles asks, because it doesn't make any sense, unless…
"You're a hostile, aren't you?" Charlotte says aloud.
Miles jerks back, startled by the realization. A hostile, one of the scary people he's heard so many stories about, people who live in the jungle and all carry guns and probably keep wild boars as pets and who knows what else.
The other boy flinches again as well, shrinks against the wall and hugs his knees tighter to his chest. Charlotte stays where she is, courageous as ever. "It's okay. We're not gonna hurt you, I promise."
Miles shoots her an incredulous look. They aren't going to hurt him? As if that's the thing everyone should be worried about?
Still, the boy seems to relax a little, and she moves closer to offer him a hand. "I'm Charlotte. This is Miles. What's your name?"
He studies her hand for a long moment before hesitantly shaking it. "Daniel," he replies in a small voice.
"Why are you here all by yourself, Daniel?"
He glances back and forth between them. "I'm...not supposed to talk to you."
"That's okay, we were about to leave anyway, right, Charlotte?" Miles grabs her arm to try and pull her back, toward the mouth of the cave, toward home.
"Cut it out," she hisses, shoving him away, and she turns back to Daniel. "Are you lost?"
He stares at her with wide, fearful eyes. "I'm s'posed to go home," he says quietly. "We were hiking, and we made camp, and when I woke up, everyone was gone."
"Your people left you here? Alone?"
Daniel nods. "It's so I'll find my way back on my own, but..." He sniffles and his voice breaks like he's about to start crying again. "I've never been this far away before, and I think I've been walking in circles all day, and now it's raining, and..."
Charlotte exchanges a look with Miles, and he can already see the terrible idea forming behind her eyes. "Don't say it," he mutters under his breath.
"We could help you," she says anyway.
"How?" Daniel asks, echoing Miles' thoughts aloud.
"If your people wanted you to follow them, they must have left a trail." Charlotte stands up straight and says, with some pride, "I'm good at tracking. If you can lead us to where you started, I bet I can find their trail and we can help you find your way back."
"As fun as that sounds," Miles speaks up, "We really need to head back home." Charlotte shoots him a glare, and he continues before she can argue, "You're not gonna find any trail while it's raining like this anyway."
As if right on cue, the rain abruptly stops.
"You were saying?" Charlotte teases, clearly amused by Miles' scowl.
Daniel's eyes dart between the two of them and the cave opening. "You really wanna...help me?" he says uncertainly, like someone trying to speak an unfamiliar language.
Charlotte nods then nudges Miles with her elbow, and he rolls his eyes and grumbles, "Fine."
She grins and holds out a hand, and Daniel lets himself be pulled to his feet, a bit unsteadily. She motions to the mouth of the cave. "Lead the way, Daniel."
He gives a hesitant nod and steps carefully past Miles before turning back to face the both of them. "You can call me Dan, if– If you want."
"Then lead the way, Dan," Charlotte corrects herself, her smile unwavering.
"What happened to your shoes?"
Daniel flinches at the question, his wide eyes darting toward Miles. "What?"
"You're not wearing shoes." Miles points to Dan's bare feet. "Why not?"
He shrugs. "Why are you?"
That throws Miles for a loop; he fumbles for a few seconds, and the answer he settles on is "In case I step on something sharp."
Dan grins, as if he's said something funny. "Just don't step on anything sharp, then," he says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Miles can't argue with that logic. He watches the way Dan walks instead, in quick glances while he's not looking; he's never heard of the hostiles being graceful, but that's the only word to describe the way Dan moves through the jungle – in sure, silent steps over the vines and the roots and the brush that Miles keeps tripping over, and all without ever looking at the ground.
"Here," Charlotte calls from a short distance ahead, and she waits for them both to catch up before pointing down at the ground. "See, this is part of a footprint. A boot." She outlines an innocuous crescent shape pressed into the mud, nearly washed away by the rain. "You can tell by the crease here in the grass, where it got stamped down."
"So if they were wearing shoes," Miles says as they turn to follow the trail, "How come you're not?"
Daniel shrugs again. "Shoes are a lot of work. I grow out of them too fast." He says it quietly, like he's repeating something he's been told a thousand times.
"So, do any of the kids you know have shoes?"
He shakes his head. "There aren't any other kids."
Miles frowns and opens his mouth to ask what he does all day then, if he doesn't have any friends. He bumps into Charlotte, who's stopped walking suddenly. "What?"
"I can't find the trail." She looks around the small clearing uncertainly. "I don't think I've lost it, but it… It just stops here."
Miles glances back and forth between her and Dan. "What does that mean?"
In less than a second, he gets his answer; no less than ten people emerge from the trees, almost from nowhere. Miles doesn't even have time to think before they're all surrounded.
"Wait, it's okay," Daniel is saying, placing himself in front of the other two. "They were helping me!"
Miles barely hears him. He's never had a gun pointed at him before, much less several guns. His heart pounds in his throat. His dad probably doesn't even know that he's gone. He doesn't know where he is. He won't know where to find him.
On the edge of his vision, Charlotte slowly raises her hands in surrender. Miles doesn't do the same; he can't move. He stares down the barrel of the nearest rifle, still as a statue. Loud footsteps move toward him, and he's too afraid to look.
The stomping figure lunges into view, looming over the three of them like a monster. He grabs Daniel's arm, hard enough that Dan lets out a small yelp of pain. "The purpose of this exercise," the man growls, with an accent like Charlotte's, "Is to learn survival. Not to fraternize with the enemy."
"They were helping me," Dan repeats, in a tiny voice. "I got lost, and–"
"Then you should have stayed lost." The man twists his arm and pulls him away, roughly dragging him toward the trees. Dan bites down on his lip and lowers his head like he's trying not to cry.
"What do we do about them?" one of the others asks.
The man casts a dismissive glance over his shoulder. "What do you think?"
Miles' knees go weak. If he wasn't paralyzed with fear, he's sure he'd sink to the ground.
"No." A different voice, from the other side of the clearing. "They're just kids, Charles."
Charles, still holding onto Dan's arm in a bruising grip, turns to scowl at this other man. "They've violated the truce."
"I'm sure it wasn't on purpose." He steps into Miles' field of vision, and something like awe washes over Miles. This is Richard Alpert, the leader of the hostiles, the only one that he's ever seen before and only ever from a distance. "It's not worth starting a war." Richard locks eyes with each of them in turn, ending with Charlotte and Miles. "I'll take them back to the fence, and we can all pretend this never happened."
Charles glares at Richard.
He glares right back. "We don't kill children."
With a scoff, Charles motions to the rest of them to follow as he disappears into the jungle. Daniel turns to look back and waves timidly to Miles and Charlotte, and then he's gone.
"Not sleeping well, Daniel?"
Dan lifts his head. "What?"
"You've been sharpening the same piece for nearly two hours." His mother nods to the black rock in his hand. "Keep it up, and you won't have an arrow left."
"Oh." He holds it up to inspect the edges, mesmerized by the way the morning light scatters across the textured surface. It's another few seconds before he realizes that she's still staring at him, waiting for an answer. "No, I didn't sleep well," he says, a bit too quickly.
"I can see that," she states flatly. "Any particular reason?"
He shrugs without looking up and chips away another piece of the brittle material. "I'm a light sleeper, I guess."
"As am I."
He keeps his eyes on his hands. It had been nearly dawn by the time he'd finally made it back to his tent and shoved aside the Dan-sized lump of blankets bundled together beneath the covers of his cot. He was as careful sneaking out and back into the camp as he always is, and he isn't unaccustomed to operating on only a few short hours of sleep. What could he possibly have done to tip her off?
Regardless, he should've known already that she was suspicious, from the moment she invited herself along on his hike; knapping arrowheads isn't exactly a group activity, and it's hardly something his mother has the patience for. Naively, he'd let himself think that she simply wanted to spend time with him, to relax in the sun to the sound of waves crashing against the rocky shore.
He should have realized he was in trouble.
"Is there anything you'd like to tell me, Daniel?"
He picks off a stray shard clinging to his thumb and shakes his head. "Nothing I can think of."
She's quiet for a few seconds. "How long are you going to keep this up?"
He looks up again, startled. "Keep what up?"
"How long are you going to pretend that you haven't been sneaking into DHARMA territory?"
He's silent for a moment too long. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Daniel." There's a dangerous edge in her voice, one that makes him drop his gaze in shame. "I had you followed. I know you've been seeing an outsider."
There it is. He can't deny it, not without getting himself into even more trouble. Instead, he keeps his head down and asks, in a small voice, "Does Dad know?"
"No. He doesn't have to, as long as you're honest with me." He gives a stiff nod, and she continues, "How long?"
"Six months." Technically, it isn't a lie. His mother doesn't have to know how long they'd already been friends before that. She lets out a disappointed sigh, and he offers another half-truth, "I'm sorry."
Another sigh, and then, "Where was she born?"
Dan looks up. "What?"
"This girl you've been sneaking around with, was she born here, on the island?"
He struggles to keep his expression neutral. Of course his mother would assume that he's seeing a girl; he's never given her any reason to think otherwise. "What difference does it make?"
His mother scoffs. "It makes all the difference. You know perfectly well that a woman born on the island can't carry a child. We have no reason to believe that the same isn't true for the women of the DHARMA Initiative."
He blinks a few times, still not understanding. "But, what does that have to do with–"
"You are our future, Daniel." She says it as if it's something he needs to be reminded of, as if it's not something he's been hearing his whole life. "If you're going to traipse around with the enemy, it should at least be with someone who can bear your children."
He flinches and shakes his head as heat rises up his neck. "I don't– That's not– I–I really don't wanna think about that kind of thing right now," he finally manages to stammer out.
She responds with a curt nod. "Then she's a waste of time." She stands, finished with the conversation. "You don't see her again," she says, and then she walks away, back toward the jungle.
That's it, then. It's all over, and he won't even get to say goodbye. Dan stays where he is, staring down at the ground. He knows better than trying to argue, but…
"Come along, Daniel," his mother calls out over her shoulder. "You should know perfectly well that I won't be leaving you unsupervised anytime soon."
Obediently, he stands and trudges after her without a word.